Update on Weir T56 bellhousing adapter

[strotter]

I picked up a Weir bellhousing adapter to mate a T56 to my 327 a couple of months ago, and it's finally back in the car. The hydraulic throwout bearing is wonderful, as it has a bleeder built right in. Joy! Everything else went smoothly until it came to reinstalling the exhaust. Turns out that, even though the new bellhousing is no larger in diameter than the original in the *front*, it's quite a bit larger on the rear where it mates to the tranny. To be fair, the T56 is quite a bit larger than the T-5 at that point as well. This wouldn't be a problem if you're starting an exhaust from scratch, but I already had a system assembled for the previous T-5 that fit quite snugly. When hung underneath, the exhaust clunked firmly into the adapter on the driver's side, as did the crossover pipe into the back of the tranny mount, which had been moved back about 1.5" or so. I took care of the latter with a hammer and some pent-up rage, but the driver's side pipe needed some rethinking. I ended up rerouting it outward, toward the wheel and back again, by cutting a series of wedges out of the pipe leaving just a bit to hold it together, then welding it back together. Ended up with a 1" gap by the crossover, which I filled with a sleeve from Pep Boys. Yeah, it's ugly, but it's airtight. One downside is that the whole thing is a good 3/4" lower than before - it looks like I'll be more careful over speed bumps in the future.